April. That was when I started work on the drivers side inner wing. For a variety of reasons it’s taken all this time to finish it. There was a lot of rot that was hidden from view, but the good news is it’s all sorted now.

During this time I’ve had chance to think on a few other things. One was that some bits just weren’t worth repairing, specifically the radiator support bar. So I chopped it out:

All of the three under bumper mounting bolts were seized in or had already snapped. It was just crusty with rust.

Although I marked the new bar for all three of the original radiator rubber mounting holes, I only drilled the two for the 16v rad. I’ve also added M6 nuts underneath for the bumper mountings.

Undoing the nuts and bolts for that rad bar once was enough so before I zinc primered it up, I welded some nuts on so now it’s just 4 cap head bolts and a 5mm hex key to remove. Also shaped the end plates up a bit so that they sit within the curves of the original mounting point pressings.